i'm thankful that when i came out onto the loading dock to get my bike after work yesterday, there were hundreds of students waiting in long lines that snaked through the parking lot and off the bike path into the distance. i'm thankful for twitter and instagram search, which i used when i got home and which let me see pictures of the thousands of people that spent all of a rainy day filling fat lines snaking all over campus to see bernie sanders speak at the auditorium. i'm thankful for the snapchat "campus story," which i look forward to every week for the student-level view it gives me of the campus and thankful that its view this week was of students laughing and dancing and singing joyfully while they patiently waited in endless lines.
i'm thankful to imagine that maybe some of them had a naive youthful hope that even though they were far back in a very long line, they still might get in somehow, by luck or magic or providence, but i'm thankful most of them must have known that they wouldn't get to the auditorium to see him speak, that they were waiting for "nothing." i'm thankful that it was still clearly important for them to spend their time waiting in the line with other people, to be present in that place at that time. i'm thankful that they were present. i'm thankful that i've never seen so many people gathered together here in five years and thankful that they were gathered because they believe things about america that i also believe, which makes me feel hope.
i'm thankful that after several days of increasing anxiety, discomfort, and dread, i realized that, contrary to what i thought, my essential brain chemistry has not changed enough over the past few years for me to be able to take allergy medicine with pseudoephedrine in it. i'm thankful, despite feeling horrible in my body every other way, that my sinuses were clearer than they have been in years, even though this was ultimately not worth it. i'm thankful that because pseudoephedrine is used to make meth, you can only buy claritin d in packs of 10 after having your driver's license number logged by the pharmacist, which i found frustrating in the moment at CVS but am now thankful for because it means i didn't waste too much money buying medicine that i can't actually take.
i'm thankful for the low grade depression that has settled over me in the wake of the chemical intensity of the past few days, even though it's frustrating in its own way and i feel like my writing is less full of sparks and fizz this week than last week. i'm thankful that in the winter, when i had nostalgic fantasies about what spring would be like, my brain edited out allergy season—i'm thankful because even if it's been unpleasant to be struck by the force of the pollen all of a sudden, it's still better to be able to dream unencumbered. i'm thankful that in my spells of anxiety, reading about knausgaard's spells of anxiety seemed too intense, so i switched over to n.k. jemisin's novel the fifth season. i'm thankful that it is great so far and that it is one of the first fantasy novels i've ever felt like i connected with.
i'm thankful, in the abstract i was editing for a faculty member earlier today, for the typo "shed lights" (for "shed light"), which made me imagine a dog made of light with glowing particles of it flying off of him as he ran through a field at night. i'm thankful for the faculty member who asked me to send his curriculum survey to students from my email with a tag i wrote myself, because he thought students were more likely to respond to me than him (i'm thankful that he came over a few minutes later, excited, and said "we've already got forty responses!"). i'm thankful to have unearthed the office first aid kit, the contents of which look like they were teleported out of an episode of mash but which thankfully still worked for the broken blister a student's high heels caused. i'm thankful to have told her that the vintage gauze wrap secured with scotch tape looked chic and she should play it off as an intentional style choice. i'm thankful to have walked all the way from the mailroom to the office with a hardback book balanced on top of my head.